Kaywoodie Flame Grain 99B Restored

[ssjones]

I own and enjoy several Super Grain Kaywoodies from the 30's, late 40's and 60's. This is my first Flame Grain, which I believe was made in the late 1940's or early 1950's. I did a restoration article on the Reborn Pipes blog:

http://rebornpipes.com/2014/09/05/kaywoodie-flame-grain-99b-restored-pre-1955/
Before:

After:

 

[plateauguy]

Beautiful job, Al! This is one of my all time favorite pipes, glad someone else enjoys them too.

 

[agnosticpipe]

Great restoration! I love old Kaywoodies, although for some reason I don't seem to have very many. Gonna have to do something about that!

 

[danielplainview]

Nice work. Great looking bulldog.

 

[irish]

Great Job as usual Al. That is a good looking Kaywoodie. I bet it makes a great smoker. :puffpipe:

 

[voorhees]

Lovely work Al. Your article confirms the age of my Kaywoodie meer. It has the same large ball 4 hole stinger.

 

[tuold]

Beautiful results! (Isn't it amazing how some people let that much buildup accumulate in the bowl?)

 

[sidious]

I wish I could do work like that. That pipe looks great!

 

[shaintiques]

Beauty, love it. I'm a sucker for bulldogs.

 

[antbauers]

As always, nice job and great taste. Very nice!

 

[ssjones]

Thanks guys. That one was one of the most difficult shanks to clean that I have encountered. I spent the better part of an hour with brushes and alcohol. I never got it completely clean, but apparently good enough. I smoked the pipe this morning with no funky ghosting.

 

[ssjones]

Mr. Can has a very nice Super Grain churchwarden available!

 

[papipeguy]

Nice job cleaning that up, Al. Someday you'll have to show me your technique for cleaning rims so nicely.

 

[ssjones]

There was one issue with the pipe that I did not fix on the first attempt, and just corrected. The stem insert was off by a hair and not square to the diamond shank of the briar. This left a little ridge that I could feel and it can be seen in one of the "before" pictures. Steve Laug said some inserts could be moved into position with a pair of needle-nosed pliars, which I attempted, but was unsuccessful. He also suggested trying a little heat (it was difficult to heat with damaging the briar). This was nerve-wracking trying to grab the thin metal edge and not damage the briar.
I looked thru my auto tool box and decided that perhaps I could remove the insert with a set of screw-extractors. This bit did remove the insert. I had to clean and then grease the insert threads which worked! Thanks Steve for the encouragement and advice!

 

[xrundog]

Oh yeah, the RiffRaff pipe. NOW I know who you are! Nice job on that one.

 

[mrenglish]

That is practically night and day. Great job on the restore.

 

[mso489]

Handsome restoration. A good case against cake building, to my mind. That was back when the Drinkless feature

on Kaywoodie actually lined up the bit perpendicular to the shank. Now you have to employ a hair dryer to soften

the glue and hope the re-hardened glue holds the job in place. Kaywoodie does make some push-bit briar pipes,

if you can find them.

 

[ssjones]

@mso489: The stinger was correctly oriented to the stem, it was the insert in the shank that needed adjustment.
@xrundog: There is a member "riff raff" here, but I'm "ssjones" on this forum, "riff raff" on all other platforms.

 

[bent1]

99b is my favorite pipe & shape. congrats!

 

[buroak]

An amazing restoration and helpful step-by-step for those of us with Kaywoodies to restore. The large-ball stinger on yours marks an early Flame Grain. I have seen some that may be a few years older, but not many. Also, any bent Flame Grains I have seen lack the really early stinger design, so yours may be about as old as it gets. As late as 1952 Kaywoodie advertised their Flame Grains as being made from 200-400 year-old Albanian briar. You have a beautiful and old piece of briar in your stable of pipes.